René Lacerte, founder and CEO of Bill.com, grew up with parents who were entrepreneurs, so he vividly recalls conversations at the dinner table that revolved around the frustration of managing payables and receivables. That's why he started Bill.com, an online business-payments network designed for small- to medium-sized companies.

The Palo Alto, California-based firm gives companies simple online bill-payment tools, custom invoicing services, document storage, workflow collaboration and the ability to access their back-office functions from anywhere via a mobile device—in short, all the things that would have made his parents' lives easier. The services sync to a business owner's accounting software—including QuickBooks and NetSuite—and online bank accounts so that everything can be seen and reconciled from one platform.

To date, there are more than 275,000 users on Bill.com. The company handles 10 million bills per year totaling more than $12 billion. Its success attracted $38 million in financing last November, led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from Bank of America and American Express.